


Don'cha Think It's Kinda Cute?

by Naive_Archivist



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M, Supernatural Elements, ghosties and junk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-05-18 11:42:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19333840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naive_Archivist/pseuds/Naive_Archivist
Summary: New house, new town, new school, new bullies, new friends! Old mom, old routine, old stresses, old problems.Old games, new players.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy hey first chapter is just to kind of introduce everything

The room is empty, your mattress is on the floor. You’ve just moved in, you think. Everything feels big, and empty. It’s dark, probably very late. You’re not sure how long you’ve been up. You don’t remember sleeping at all, actually. The nightlight next to your door is on though, casting parts of the room and hallway in eerie shadow and a golden glow. You can hear your mother snoring across the hall, but your focus is on the stairway to the left of her door.

Something is walking up the steps. Then back down.

Up.

Down.

Up.

It stops.

Your breathing catches, making your already still form freeze. You can’t see it, but you know it didn’t walk down. It stays on the top step, within sight of your open bedroom door. You stare. You can’t see anything.

Eddie shoots upright in bed, breathing heavily and sweating. His gaze is already on his open doorway, no longer lit up with a nightlight but now with even more eerie shadows.

It didn’t walk down.

\-----

Eddie Kaspbrak is sixteen years old. He is the only child of Sonia and Frank Kaspbrak. He and his mother moved to Derry from somewhere in the midwest when Eddie was no older than four after his father’s unfortunate passing due to a quickly spreading lung cancer.

Eddie hears things that come from nowhere. He sees people who shouldn’t be there, things that shouldn’t happen.

Eddie thinks he’s crazy.

Maybe not crazy, per se, but that his thoughts and visions had simply been the imagination of an isolated, lonely child with an overbearing mother. Afterall, it had been years since any of that happened.

Right?

\-----

When Eddie went back to public school, he wasn’t sure what he expected. Maybe some fun shenanigans with a group of friends, like in those 80s movies he’s watched religiously on vhs. Or some super boring lessons that never seemed to end.

It wasn’t though. It was just mind numbingly mundane.

Sure, some classes were boring and some he had a hard time understanding, but they were just normal. And he didn’t have friends, but he also didn’t not have friends. There were people he talked to in class, who he would pair with as project partners, but none of them would hang out outside of those classes.

He would wake up before his mother, do his morning routine, skip breakfast, catch the bus, take the same average classes he always did, take the bus home, greet his mother from her spot on the living room recliner, do his homework at the kitchen table, make dinner, eat in the living room and listen as his mom tells him the latest gossip she heard while in town, clean the dishes, bid his mother goodnight, and retreat to his bedroom to read before falling asleep.

The same thing, everyday, without fail.

It was tearing him apart, a feeling of dread building stronger every time he woke up.

He just wanted something more.

\-----

Eddie is very much out of breath, but he slaps a hand over his mouth to stifle the heavy sound of his pants. He can see the feet of Henry Bowers and someone else,Victor maybe, from the other side of the bleachers. Victor is cackling as Henry taunts him.

“Come on out, girly boy… Don’t be a pussy!”

“What’s this about pussies?”

A different voice, a girl, interrupts. He sees someone else walk in front of the bleachers, though she makes sure to keep her distance.

“Get out of here, Marsh. This ain’t none of your business.”

She scoffs. “Yeah, right. Whoever you’re looking for ain’t here, no one comes this way this time of day. Sterling makes her rounds to check for people skipping during lunch.”

Eddie doesn’t listen to the rest of the conversation, this girl seems to have it handled pretty well. He instead tries to get his breathing under control before he passes out because wow he is dizzy. 

He finally gets steadied, and looks around to gain his bearings, only to almost jump out of his skin at the sight of someone sitting next to him.

She laughs a little bit, leaning down to look at his face as he clutches his chest.

“Hey, you okay? I’m surprised you actually managed to get away, props.”

Definitely the girl from before. Her deep red hair looks messy, like she cut it herself, but it frames her freckled face incredibly well. Her eyes are bright green and very comforting, for the first time in his life he doesn’t see any form of judgement in them.

Eddie stares for a second, but ultimately decides that if she wanted to hurt him she would’ve ratted him out. “Yeah, yeah I, uh, I’m good at running, sometimes.”

She smiles, seemingly satisfied that he responded. He distantly thinks that her smile is probably the best thing he’s ever seen. She abruptly sticks her hand out, arm completely straight, ratty jacket seeming too tight on the wrist but too large on the arms.

“I’m Beverly Marsh.”

He hesitantly takes her hand, shaking it up and down three times.

“Eddie Kaspbrak.”

Her smile brightens even more, taking up the majority of her face, and Eddie knows it’s definitely the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

\-----

_“Are we friends?”_

_Beverly stares at him with an almost amused expression, almost as though asking “Uh, duh?”_

_“Of course we are, silly.”_

_He nods, smiling, because of course."_

\-----

Beverly already has friends, of course, but she doesn’t understand when Eddie tells her to go on and hang with them at lunch rather than him. When he tries to explain, she laughs.

“You’re coming with me, stupid. Need a proper Losers Club initiation.”

“Losers Club?”

The Losers Club turns out to be a group of six kids in their grade, some of which he’s heard of and some not.

They welcomed Eddie with open arms, much to his surprise, and found he fit in place perfectly.

As they parted to head to their separate classes, Eddie swore that he saw a flash of something yellow following Bill. He squinted, and if he saw the air behind him shimmer a bit in the silhouette of a small person, he didn’t dwell on it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one doesn't have a lot of dialogue, which is odd because I love writing conversations, but I guess it just hasn't fit into it yet? Oh well

At least you know you’re dreaming this time. Another memory, it seems.

You’re sitting in the living room floor, your mom is up doing something in her bedroom and therefore not around to watch you like the hawk she is. You take the ragdoll your aunt made for you and do as children do, making it interact with your other toys (soft, large toys whose buttons and other small pieces have been removed long ago and never returned). The shadows in the room bend from the corner of your eye, the light suddenly seems washed out, too dull but also too bright. A shadowy figure of sorts is moving aimlessly, no rhyme or reason to its movements. You try not to stare, staring makes it upset and makes you unbelievably nervous, but the doll is dragged from your hand and thrown against the wall with enough force to make the vase on the coffee table shake despite your efforts.

You wait for some kind of call from your mother, checking in to see what the noise was and if you’re okay, but it never comes. You stare at the spot it hit. Something is watching you. The shadows slink along the walls, crowding behind your back. You want to move, you know what happens next and it doesn’t have to if you could just  _ move- _

Eddie jerks awake for the second time in a week with a choked scream. He slaps a hand over his mouth and listens for any sign of having awoken his mother before letting it drop and taking a few heaving breaths.

Another godforsaken dream about who knows what kind of weird nonsense. Memories, though Eddie doesn’t want to call them as such with how muddled they are by time and the imagination of a small child.

Something moves within the shadows next to his bed. Eddie’s head jerks so fast to the right it almost gives him whiplash.

Nothing. Of course it was nothing! For it to have not been nothing, it would’ve had to be something! And there was nothing there for it to have been something, so it had to be nothing!

Eddie’s giving himself a headache.

 

\-----

 

Of all the places Eddie expected the Losers to bring him for their first summer hangout, he couldn’t say this was his first choice.

He had thought maybe the Aladdin, or that diner off the square whose name he didn’t actually know, or even just roaming the back streets on their bikes. But no. They led him through some backwoods near the bridge, past a pond in front of an intimidating iron structure (“Them’s the old barracks, been abandoned since the Iron Works explosion back in 1908.” A somber silence washed over the group as Mike said this, mostly to Eddie. Eddie wondered if anyone else noticed the weird shadows moving around the building.) and eventually coming to a cliff’s edge, where they all started stripping without a care.

Which brings Eddie to where he is now, barely stopping a surprised squeak from escaping his throat as he averts his gaze to his own ratty sneakers, before the light shining off the water far, far below catches his eye. He feels his face heat up, but looks back up after the sound of clothes rustling stops anyway. They’re all joking around in their underwear, asking which of them will take the first jump.

The first jump?

The first jump.

_ The first jump. _

“Are you guys insane!? This cliff is like fifty feet up, that’s suicide!”

This catches their attention, before they break out into lighthearted laughter. Beverly grabs his shoulder and leads him to the edge. For some reason, he feels embarrassed. What a role reversal. Being embarrassed for being the only person fully clothed in a group of half naked teenagers. His toes touch the very edge, but his shoulders lean farther back as the guys look over the cliff from behind him.

“Look,” Bev starts lightly, waving a hand out, “it’s fine. We’ve done this tons, every year. It’s totally safe.”

Eddie mumbles something about how he doubts it, seeing as Richie has obviously hit his head on something a few too many times, and gains a hearty bout of laughter from them. Including Richie, who single handedly almost drowns the rest of them out, who gives him a slap on the back that makes him stumble just a bit too far for his liking. He lets out a small shriek and scrambles away. This gains more laughter. Eddie thinks he might actually catch fire at the rate his face is heating up. They all go back to arguing over who will jump first while Eddie gets distracted once again by something moving. This time it’s by Bill’s bike, lovingly named Silver, that’s leaned against a tree with their bags.

He squints, trying to make out a shape among the warping image. Something fades in and out, dull and fuzzy but there, small and humanoid. He finally focuses on it enough to see the bright yellow of some kind of jacket before there’s screaming. His focus is jerked to the group again, panicked, and he rushes over the join them looking over the edge.

Beverly hits the water with a large splash. Eddie holds his breath ( _ one, two, three, four _ ) until she pops up again. Richie laughs, loud and unrestrained, before he’s jumping off too. They all follow ( _ Ben, Bill, Stan, Mike _ ) before Eddie was alone, fully clothed, on his knees, white-knuckling the edge of the cliff and staring down as they all shout and encourage him to join them.

He scoots away and shakily gets to his feet, trying to take deep breaths as he strips his shirt over his head with minimal issues beyond getting the collar caught on his ears. Adding his neatly folded shirt, socks, and shoes among everyone else’s (though they had all just tossed them onto the dirt, except Stan, who had laid out a towel and placed his own folded clothes on it. Eddie hoped he wouldn’t mind Eddie using it for his too), he decided that he would leave on the track shorts he had worn instead of stripping to his underwear as everyone else had.

He hears their cheers start up again as he comes back into view from the water. He stares down at them and tries to steady his breathing.

_ I can’t do this, I can’t do this, this is crazy, you can’t… _

With a small running start, and thoughts of his own insanity racing through his head, he shuts his eyes and jumps.

The cheers are drowned out by wind rushing by and the sound of his own heartbeat. It feels terrifying, and exhilarating, and  _ freeing _ .

It’s interrupted abruptly by his body hitting the water with a cold shock. He sinks down, down, far enough the pressure starts to hurt his ears. He tries to open his eyes, but the water is murky and burns. The adrenaline from the jump is muted, leaving him feeling calm. He floats for a moment and listens to the soft sound of the water moving around him. Finally, he pushes towards the surface.

As soon as he breaks the surface, the adrenaline is back in his system and he’s breathing heavily, looking around at his cheering friends, blinking through the water dripping into his eyes. He laughs, almost hysterical. He looks around as he calms down, and sees the figure from before at the bank. It’s almost completely solid now.

A young boy in a yellow raincoat stands watching them, silent and unmoving. The world is muted once more, as though he’s underwater again, the colors seem more dull and washed out. He opens his mouth, preparing to ask if anyone knows him, glancing away for a second to see who’s closest to him, before his gaze darts back to the spot.

Empty.

He’s immediately sobered, a cold weight settling on his chest as he frantically scans the area to catch any sign that he just moved away, maybe trying to escape once he realized he’d been spotted. There was nothing. It’s not like there were many places to hide, the area was rather flat and covered in rocks for a good eight feet before turning back into the woods.

Bill calls out to him, inviting him to join him in a game of chicken against Ben and Stan. The world suddenly comes back into focus full force. It almost startles him, but he manages to hide any discomfort and agrees. No one seems to notice his worried glances to the shore as he climbs on Bill’s shoulders.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things happen, some things get said, more things happen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This??? Was not how I planned this to go. But oh well we're here now so. I wrote most of this at like 6 this morning and it kinda did what it wanted to

“Eds!”

“Not my name.”

“Eds, bud, pal, broham-”

“Get on with it, Richie.”

“I’ve got an urgent summons for you.”

“Suspicious.”

“No, listen, just hear me out, I’m being serious.”

“Doubt it.”

“Eddie.”

Hearing his name, his actual name, made him sober up a bit.

“What is it?”

“Bill wants to meet everyone down at the Barrens, Stan called and said it was important. Told me to call you, make sure you could make it.”

Eddie was already up, grabbing his fanny pack and medical supplies, before Richie had finished his sentence. He keeps the phone pressed to his ear as he hurries past his mother, slipping past her before she realized what had happened. He makes sure to keep a fast walking pace, not wanting to risk the health threats of full on running ( _“Your asthma, Eddie-Bear, you don’t want to overwork your lungs! And imagine if you fell! You could break your ankle, or your arm, or you neck! And then you’d die and leave me all alone! You wouldn’t do that to mommy, would you?”_ ).

“Is everything okay? Did something happen?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t actually talked to him. Stan just said it was something important. I gotta go, I’m at the square. See you there?”

Eddie puffs a breath as he jogs across the street, constantly looking in both directions the entire way across. “Yeah, see ya’.”

“Bye, Eds.”

Eddie flips his phone shut, ending the call with a sharp snap, and fumbles to put the phone in the fanny pack he slung across his hips on the way out. Rapid footsteps draw his attention to a sprinting Beverly coming up to his right. She slows down as she catches up to him.

They’re the only two on this side of town, Ben and Mike both live on the outskirts on the other side, while Bill, Stan, and Richie all had places in the nicer area. He and Bev had a tendency to walk together, for safety and company, and it seems today wouldn’t be any different.

“Did… you... get… the call?” She manages to get out through heavy pants, Eddie resists the urge to scold her for her smoking habit and the effects it has on her lungs.

“Yeah. Richie said he was already at the square, so the others are probably already there.”

Beverly nods. They picked up speed as they got past the square themselves and were now jogging through the backstreets, trying to avoid any main roads and the obstacles that come with it.

By the time they arrive, Eddie barely out of breath and Beverly dramatically collapsing to her knees as she intakes big gulps of air, everyone except Mike was there. Mike lives nearly twenty minutes away, and they took maybe five themselves, so it isn’t anything new to wait. The only thing making it unbearable is Bill’s pacing.

Mike finally arrives on his delivery bike, which he props next to Silver before joining their semicircle awaiting Bill’s news.

"Yuh-you're gun-g-gon-gonna th-think I-I'm crazy."

"Too late!"

Despite Richie's attempts to lighten the mood, the tension was still thick in the air. Bill's stutter is terrible, it's almost impossible to understand what he was saying. Stan pushes Richie's shoulder, very lightly. Just enough to let him know to quiet down.

"I-I-I've buh-been - I mean - i-eh-it's like…"

He's obviously trying to figure out how to word it, and Eddie feels guilty at the slight feeling of impatience that wells up in him. He pushes it down and internally scolds himself for being a bad person in a voice that sounds a lot like his mother. He's distracted from Bill's struggling and his own conscience by the fading form of a small person standing right behind Bill. The boy! The boy, from the quarry!

He's small, a young child by the looks of it, wearing rain gear complete with bright yellow rubber boots and raincoat. He looks like he's holding onto Bill's shirt, or as much as he can without any physical form. He looks kind of scared, but also like he's saying something to Bill. Eddie can't hear it, even if actual sound was coming out his head is too full of static to discern any words, but Bill seems to. His eyes dart down to him for a second, unnoticed to their friends who just see a nervous boy with a bad stutter. Eddie must've zoned out for longer than he thought, staring at the boy, who didn't look away from Bill once, because as the world comes back into focus the Losers were gaping at Bill.

"... _What?!_ "

Okay Eddie has obviously missed a very important plot point, but before he can embarrass himself by asking someone to repeat it, they're all talking over each other in a rush. Bill looks overwhelmed as they clamor closer, asking if he's sure and how and is he sure like he's not just going insane with some delayed denial right? His eyes keep darting to the spot beside him, where the boy remains to stand motionless.

Beverly shouts for everyone to shut up. They listen without argument. She turns to face Bill, a pleasant smile on her face. "Explain."

"I d-doh-don't know huh-how, o-o-or why, buh-b-but he's just - there! A-a-and he fo-follows me ar-around, a-a-and t-talks t-to me, a-a-and it's so much l-ll-l-like he used t-t-t-to -" he pauses, his voice sounds heavy, like he's trying not to cry, "I d-d-do-don't know wh-what's going o-on."

Everyone is quiet, Eddie doesn't quite understand what's going on but assumes it's something to do with the boy who is now almost as fully formed as the people he's standing next to. There's a somber silence over them, even Richie looks sad and nervous. True to fashion, he's still the one who ends up breaking the quiet.

"Bill, he's gone dude. I thought we went through this already, I mean - You were the one who found his -"

" _I know!_ "

Bill's shaking, teary eyed and staring at his feet.

"I know, okay? Buh-but I can't - he's th-there a-and I d-d-don't knuh-know why o-or h-h-how buh-but he is! A-a-and I d-don't know wh-what to d-do o-or hu-how-how to c-c-o-con-convince y-you I'm t-re-telling th-the truth b-but…"

"I believe you." Eddie's voice breaks the next round of silence, soft and wary but there. Bill looks thankful, but the others don't seem all that convinced.

"This is insane though! There's no such thing as ghosts, and we know it's not actually him because he's dead and we know he's dead because _we found him!_ " Ben seemed hysterical, which honestly Eddie thought was an overreaction because really nothing has even happened to him, if anything Bill should be the one freaking out but other than almost crying during his confession he seems fine.

Beverly, loving and sweet to Ben as she is, pushes his arm rather harshly.

"What the hell, Ben?! That's so messed up, we don't talk about that shit - !"

"Well obviously we should've! No one's talked about it since the funeral and it's gone and fucked with his head!"

"How would you feel if you found the most important person in the world to you _dead in the sewer_ , Ben?!" Stan threw his two cents in, shaking and panicked but standing strong.

Eddie balked as the shouting started, arguing over Bill's mental health and dead brothers and bodies in sewers and serial killers. He was so lost, but apparently they all had a lot of things building up about this because truths were flying out and people were crying and voices were going hoarse to be heard over each other.

At one point Richie got in Bill's face, shouting that Georgie was dead and he needed to _get the fuck over it._ Bill punched him in the face. Both of them had to be held back as the shouting grew louder.

Within ten minutes each of them had stormed off, one by one, voices raw and throats aching and faces damp with tears. Bill and Eddie stood alone, in complete silence.

From what Eddie could gather, no one really believed them, but Beverly was on their side. Richie, Stan, and Ben had all claimed Bill needed a reality check. Mike tried to stay neutral, but he ended up siding with Richie, far less aggressively, when it came down to it.

Eddie looks at Bill, his face red and tears still running down his cheeks. His breathing is heavy, his fists clenching like he wants nothing more than another swing at Richie. He lets out a guttural scream, full of anger and pain, before storming off and pedaling away as fast as he can.

Eddie's left alone, shocked and dazed, as Bill's scream echoes around him.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a tumblr cough cough naive-archivist


End file.
